hi everyone big thiny boom Tano here the internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of this new MJ Lenderman record Manning fireworks this is said to be the fourth fulllength solo album of singer songwriter and guitarist a multi-instrumentalist really Mr MJ Lenderman somebody who on the Indie circuit I have been seeing get quite a bit of Buzz Lately from some key placements on the latest records of wax aah hatchee as well as Kevin AB ract MJ also happens to be 1th of the upand cominging Indie and ALT country outfit Wednesday who had
a very well-received album last year which puts Mr Lenderman here in a spot where uh this latest record of his is likely to see uh bump in attention probably the most he's seen on a solo record so far which has most definitely been the case since this thing came out and the reception for it has been incredibly warm so warm in fact I feel like I had to give the album a shot myself though I can't really say that after having heard this thing I'm ready to jump into the chorus of people singing its Praises
just for anyone who isn't in the no the rubric of influences going into uh the music on this album is not all that different than what you might have caught on Wednesday's album last year and for sure it's cool to hear new and upand cominging artists uh repping a tasteful combination of slacker Rock of indie folk as well as alt Country and '90s Radio Rock that's obviously throwing out a lot of nods to the greats silver Jew Simon Joiner pavement wallf flowers Neil Young maybe a little Counting Crows too but while MJ lender's sound is
a very studied amalgamation of all of those things and more a lot of the time the execution leaves a lot to be desired as I think there's very little flare or panach to how any of these sounds are explored on this record often MJ and his collaborators hammer through uh really basic beats and chord progressions as if they were just a very D-League local band uh that your uncle was in C wristwatch or she's leaving you or even on my knees which honestly makes a lot of these tracks kind of tiresome to listen to In
addition to the occasional grading fiddle layer as well as MJ's actual voice fronting these songs too to say Mr Lenderman is an uninteresting singer would be a massive understatement simultaneously he has this very youthful boyish tamber to his voice but he delivers it in a way to where he's trying to come across as like he's just weary Beyond his years which if that was actually the case you would think he'd have more to say or the capacity to actually bring some genuine wit or tragedy to his writing in fact there are numerous lycal highlights across
this record that uh to me Reed is just laughably bad like on the song Rip Torn whose uh title at first had me thinking is this going to be some kind of like Men In Black reference with with the actor uh but no the opening lyric is actually I guess I'll call you Rip Torn the way you got tore up the lyrics from here read like a bunch of hokey non SE witters that are meant to paint I guess a picture of somebody who's coming out of a hangover or coming down from something but the
words MJ uses are so Preposterous they kind of undercut the gravity of the situation passed out in your Lucky Charms lucky doesn't mean much oh but wait a second the title of this thing is a Men In Black reference you said there's men and then there's movies and then there's Men In Black you said there's milkshakes and there's smoothies you always lose me when you talk like that yeah man me too Beyond this the track comes to this disappointingly inconclusive finish that will most likely have you asking what the hell was even the point as
MJ's lyrics are often pretty scant and repetitive across many of these tracks and he formulates them a lot of the time like he's just constantly setting up onliners only for the second part of them to hit you in the face like a rake you stepped on or a wet fart how many roads must a man walk down till he learns he's just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse till it burns I've never seen the Mona Lisa I've never really left my room I've been up here too late with Guitar Hero playing Bark at
the Moon plus there's all these moments where it kind of feels like he's trying to just force in a bunch of popular culture references only to uh try to turn them tragic in some way like where he's a coward cutting Joker lips into a rubber mask or a deleted scene of Lightning McQueen blacked out at full speed is this all like a loss of Innocence thing it just kind of reads like bad Tik Tok poetry like oh man you you were my biggest red flag but Red's my favorite color there's also just so little in
terms of topical and narrative follow through on a lot of these tracks too like she's leaving you for example which in terms of a Trope a songwriting Trope this is like the easiest layup on the entire record songs about her leaving you have been written thousands of times at this point and MJ despite titling his track this just can't seem to muster up the gumption to do it because in the four minutes this song lasts he can't really put into words why this is happening why it even fraking matters you said Vegas is beautiful at
night and it's not about the money you just like the lights yeah obviously nobody talks about how beautiful Vegas is at night thinking about the money of of course they're reacting to the lights furthermore why are they in the song to begin with because they don't add to any understanding as to why she's leaving you they just come across like meaningless filler like the lazy guitar solo in the second half of the track so yeah up until this point uh pretty much everything on the album is just severely unimpressive but from here there are some
ending Oddities to the record that I suppose are of some note the song you don't know the shape I'm in I think is the closest This Record comes to uh some kind of U lyrical coherence that is until MJ spirals into getting just a bit too meta and is lyrically referencing the clarinets going on in the background of the song drawing attention to them for some random reason it certainly doesn't contribute to anything he's saying on the track earlier and also the track Bark at the Moon uh surprisingly ends with about uh six minutes of
droning guitars bass feedback and effects which for a record of this style is just so damn random and out of place but simultaneously this is about as interesting as the album gets because let me tell you if there's anything exciting about this record it's not in the lyrics it's not in MJ's grasp of Melody or song structure it's not in the very Bland Indie country rock pasti uh that's going on production-wise most of the time in fact as far as singer songwriter records go this year I would say this project is like the definition of
underachievement with only a handful of tolerable tracks to spare which is why I'm feeling a light three on it TR Z have you given this record a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you rate it you're the best you're the best what should I review next hit the like if you like Please Subscribe and please don't cry hit the Bell as well over here next to my head is another video that you can check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel Anthony fantano MJ Lenderman forever
